The use of automated teller machines ("ATMs") to conduct financial transactions continues to increase. ATMs are employed to not only dispense cash on debit/credit account basis, but may also be employed to make deposits, loan payments, and transfers to/from/between accounts maintained by a user at a financial institution. Such range of options allow customers to conduct many traditional "banking" activities at all hours of the day and at numerous dispersed locations, thereby enhancing convenience and accommodating a variety of life styles.
Analogously, the ever-increasing range of telephony service options has provided telephony service consumers with increased convenience and functionality in communicating with others. By way of example, telephony-related service developments have included call forwarding, call screening, caller identification, and a variety of other services that satisfy both business and personal time-saving and mobility objectives.
As will be appreciated, however, the ability to realize increased telephony service benefits is limited when a user's access is restricted to public telephones and/or when a user is otherwise not able to conveniently incur telephony services charges in connection with calls initiated at third-party premises. To help address such instances, telephony-related service providers now offer prepaid calling cards which may be utilized, for example, to conduct long-distance calling from virtually any telephone.
In use, the holder of a prepaid calling card typically calls a predetermined telephone number corresponding with a specific telephony-related service provider, enters an account number indicated on the face of the calling card, then dials a telephone number of the user's choice, wherein corresponding telephony service is provided to the extent that incurrable charges have been prepaid. In the latter regard, the account number indicated on a calling card typically corresponds with a certain amount of prepaid telephone service access, such amount being accounted for and reduced on an ongoing basis at a telephony network service node corresponding with the predetermined telephone number called to utilize the card. Upon exhausting a prepaid access amount, the corresponding call card cannot be further utilized for telephony access. As such, prepaid calling card users may often carry several prepaid calling cards and will, in any case, be faced with at some point the recurrent need to obtain additional prepaid calling cards.